Risers and fallers in the race for the 2024 Vezina Trophy
Last season, Linus Ullmark won the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender and sparked a debate over the merits of raw numbers versus overall impact. Ullmark’s stats (1.89 goals-against average, .938 save percentage) were historic, sure, but the record-setting Boston Bruins team in front of him and success of backup Jeremy Swayman (2.27 GAA, .920 SV%) cast his value in an unfavorable light compared to that of runners-up Ilya Sorokin and Connor Hellebuyck, who had to drag their respective teams to Wildcard berths.
In the end, voters sided with the Swede, who faced fewer than 30 shots per game behind a defense featuring Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, and six-time (and current) Selke Trophy winner Patrice Bergeron. Ullmark’s stats were too good to ignore, but do not expect a similar conundrum in 2023-2024. It’s not every season that an already excellent goaltender backstops a 65-win club, and the race for the Vezina is once again wide open.
Which of the league’s shot stoppers will stake their claim to the 2024 edition of the award, and which will fall out of the debate completely?
Risers
When the Ottawa Senators shipped him to Minnesota Wild in exchange for veteran goalie Cam Talbot last summer, hockey fans who could put a face to Filip Gustvasson’s name were the minority. GMs Bill Guerin and Pierre Dorion designed the move to end any controversy between Talbot and future Hall-of-Famer Marc-Andre Fleury, shore up Ottawa’s net, and open some financial flexibility in the Twin Cities. No one expected Gustavsson to unseat Fleury down the stretch en route to being named the starter for the Wild’s playoff series with the rival Dallas Stars.
Gustavsson played his way into a three-year, $11.25 million extension by posting a .931 SV%, the second-best rate among goaltenders who played in as many as his 39 games. He allowed an equally impressive 2.10 goals per game, also second-best only to Ullmark. The pressure Gustavsson endured in 2022-2023 was immense, and despite Fleury breathing down his neck and the Wild needing a late-season surge to make the postseason, Gustavsson never faltered. Though the Wild lost in Round 1 of the playoffs, the 25-year-old repaid their faith by allowing just 2.33 goals per game against Dallas as ‘Flower’ struggled to a .811 save percentage.
Where former sensations like Andrew Hammond fell back down to Earth, Gustavsson is in a position to succeed in 2023-2024. Behind a stingy Wild defensive scheme led by captain Jared Spurgeon and shutdown center Joel Eriksson Ek, Gustavsson will only have more opportunities to shine as the 38-year-old Fleury sees his workload decrease. Look for the Swede to graduate from under-the-radar impressiveness to full-blown stardom. That could garner Vezina consideration if coach Dean Evason’s “win ugly” tactics continue to pay dividends in Minnesota.
Where Gustavsson has exploded onto the scene from obscurity, his Central Division counterpart Jake Oettinger is already a known quantity. After announcing himself on the world stage by standing on his head for seven playoff games against the Calgary Flames’ formidable 2022 outfit, Oettinger proved he was no flash in the pan over 62 games in 2022-2023.
That is workhorse territory in the modern game, and despite tying Alexandar Georgiev and Ilya Sorokin for third-most appearances, Oettinger also finished in the top four among full-time starters for GAA (2.35) and SV% (.920). Improving on those benchmarks, which were good enough to place him fifth in Vezina voting, would immediately make the BU alum a strong contender for this year’s edition of the award.
Improving on such great stats is a tall order, but at 24, Oettinger is still developing his skills, and the franchise building blocks of his Stars are only getting better. Jason Robertson (24), Miro Heiskanen (24), and Roope Hintz (26) are in it for the long haul, and if ‘Otter’ means to win the Vezina, playing on a Presidents’ Trophy contender cannot hurt.
While Gustavsson and Oettinger are great young goaltenders who could further improve, there is still an outside chance that the Vezina race sees another Ullmark-style “good goalie, great team” candidate stake his claim to the award.
Adin Hill stands out as an option to succeed with that formula. The Vegas Golden Knights have seemingly endorsed Hill as their starter with a two-year, $9.8 million contract following his Stanley Cup victory, and it seems the big netminder has finally figured out how to use his ample natural gifts. He would, however, have to ward off the challenge of Logan Thompson, who posted the same save percentage (.915) as Hill last season, to benefit from the champs’ success.
No Movement
The title of “best goaltender in the world” is rarely awarded by consensus, but Ilya Sorokin has to be considered the strongest claimant ahead of the 2023-2024 season. The Russian has dominant numbers, is totally indispensable to his team and elevates his game under pressure. In other words, Sorokin has it all.
If all that is true (it is), can he really be considered a riser? Last season he may have finished second to Ullmark for the Vezina Trophy, but voters could not reasonably expect him to improve. While starting 62 games for an Islanders team that insists on constantly grafting without the puck, Sorokin allowed just 2.34 goals per game with a .924 SV%.
The Isles have an admittedly deep defensive corps featuring Noah Dobson, Ryan Pulock, and Adam Pelech, but their offense was nonexistent. They managed only 242 goals, the 11th-worst total in the league, and converted on a pathetic 15.8 percent of power plays. Without Sorokin, their Wildcard appearance would have been a pipe dream.
GM Lou Lamierello bizarrely doubled down on a middle-of-the-road roster with hefty extensions for Scott Mayfield and Pierre Engvall, so nothing is really different for the goaltender, who won an obscene 74 percent of the team’s points last season. Sorokin cannot get better: voters can only better appreciate his dominance.
If the Islanders relied heavily on Sorokin, what the Nashville Predators did to Juuse Saros might have broken a labor law or two. Nashville fans may not have known what to expect when the diminutive Finn stepped into Pekka Rinne’s massive shoes, but they ended up with the league’s most durable workhorse. Sarros faced more than 2,000 shots while playing the most games in the NHL for the second consecutive season, and he kept the Preds in the playoff picture until the bitter end despite a trade deadline selloff.
Like the Islanders, the Predators have quality blueliners, including superstar captain Roman Josi and Ryan McDonagh, but scored too few goals to take any pressure off their netminder. Nashville’s 220 goals were the fourth-fewest in the NHL, tied with the lowly Philadelphia Flyers, and yet Saros managed to win 33 games while stopping .919 percent of opposition shots.
First-year GM Barry Trotz cannot quite decide whether he wants to rebuild; he jettisoned Matt Duchene and Ryan Johansen only to add veterans Ryan O’Reilly and Gustav Nyquist. That leaves Saros, like Sorokin, lugging a bubble team around on his back. Unlike Sorokin, though, that responsibility probably caps his numbers too much to get closer to the Vezina than last season’s fourth-place finish.
While Sorokin and Saros are too good to move down but too handicapped by their squads to move up, Igor Shesterkin cannot be called a riser or faller because of all the unknowns surrounding him and the entire New York Rangers organization. It feels like the Rangers took their best shot and missed last season when they bowed out to the New Jersey Devils after an uneven first-round performance despite having recruited playoff killers Vlad Tarasenko and Patrick Kane at the trade deadline.
Shesterkin played well in that series, but who is he as a player? The dominator who won the Vezina and finished second runner-up for the Hart Trophy in 2022, or the guy who flip-flopped between brilliance and inconsistency throughout the 2022-2023 season? Until that becomes clear, he stays put as a good-not-great bet to win a second Vezina Trophy.
Fallers
It is cheap to count Ullmark among the fallers. He could only ever get worse after last season; the 30-year-old was just the third 40-game starter to post a sub-2.00 GAA this century and the first in two decades. Still, after the record-setting Bruins and a struggling (and possibly ailing) Ullmark suffered a seven-game defeat to the Florida Panthers in the first round, things changed drastically in Boston, and their goaltender will suffer accordingly.
Dmitry Orlov and Connor Clifton were always likely to weaken the Bruins’ mighty blueline by heading for the hills in free agency; things really got ugly when David Krejci and captain Bergeron finally called it quits. The duo provided the team’s spine at both ends of the ice, and Boston’s vaunted defensive organization will take a hit with their departure.
Ullmark was very good even before joining the most statistically dominant team ever and posted above-average numbers behind some wretched Sabres defenses. With the Bruins fragmented and considerably worse than they were at this time last year, though, he can only be a faller. It does not help that Swayman, probably the best No. 2 in the league, is waiting in the wings should Ullmark falter.
While Ullmark will regress for a team that has changed drastically, Connor Hellebuyck has spent his summer waiting for the other shoe to drop. He tried to force his way out of Winnipeg to no avail, and despite trading Pierre-Luc Dubois for a king’s ransom and buying out one-time captain Blake Wheeler, long-time Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff has kept his cards close to his chest about his in-season strategy.
The executive will get calls about Hellebuyck and star center Mark Scheifele throughout the season from teams unwilling to wait out their expiring contracts. With Kyle Connor and Josh Morrissey in place long-term, though, there is little pressure on “Chevy” to trade the discontent duo any time soon. He did a masterful job of maximizing Dubois’s value despite that player making clear he would never extend with Winnipeg. Who’s to say he cannot repeat the trick with his franchise goalie?
Hellebuyck was as great as ever last season, winning 37 games with a 2.49 GAA and .920 SV%. The Jets’ likely fire sale and uncertainty on where he will be playing his hockey this spring still could make winning a second Vezina very complicated for the 30-year-old. If he gets his coveted move to New Jersey, Hellebuyck will be as strong a candidate as anyone for the 2025 award. The stock of an unhappy player likely bound for a midseason trade is too volatile not to lose value for 2024, though.
Andrei Vasilevskiy will walk into the Hall of Fame the moment his career ends, but the two-time Stanley Cup champion may have to do so with a lone Vezina to his name. Must be tough. In all seriousness, Vasilevsky is still a great player despite showing minor cracks in his armor during 2022-2023, including a concerningly human performance in the Tampa Bay Lightning’s first-round loss to the rival Toronto Maple Leafs.
What is happening on the ice is not the real problem, though. Every offseason, the Lightning see more pieces of their three-peat Eastern Conference Champions lopped off in free agency, and the organization has floundered in its search for solutions. The writing is on the wall in Tampa, and that does not bode well for Vasilevsky’s chances on awards night.
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